Yeanzi Lanin

Yeanzi Lanin – Untitled, 2025

Lanin Saint-Étienne Yeanzi  is a contemporary and multi-award winning artist living between Côte d'Ivoire and France. Questioning the concept of identity and the notion of cultural and collective heritage for identity formation is Yéanzi's main theme. His approach is at once historical, philosophical and utopian.

Since 2013, the artist has been working with recycled plastic, which he melts and drips onto various surfaces to create human figures and faces. The anonymity of his subjects, created by the uncontrolled process, challenges the established assumption of the portrait genre to capture the sitter and thus the individual in their identity. His work can be divided into three series - Persona, Projection, Colloquium - which revolve around the central theme of identity.

Yeanzi refines his aesthetic in the technical execution and thematic expression of his visual vocabulary by using different materials (canvas, fabric, plexiglass, tubes, paper, photography, handmade silkscreen, pictograms, etc.). Through his unique technique of fusing recycled plastic into faces, he synthesises and contrasts the millennia-old cultural richness of Africa with the current development of modern societies